


Making Cocoa for Spencer Reid

by bene_elim



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Autistic Spencer Reid, Character Study, David Rossi is a good dad, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Happy Ending, I said it once & i'll say it again:, Im using that tag as a precaution because I cant actually REMEMBER if i mentioned reid's drug use, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Male Friendship, Oh, Sad Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid's childhood, dinner between friends, its subtle and not directly mentioned but its there, not all the way through!!, soft!!, uhh... i think thats it for the tags?????, whatever 'ending' means for a character study - he just is content with life by the end of the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24708064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bene_elim/pseuds/bene_elim
Summary: Spencer doesn't have much experience with friendship, or with allowing people close to him, but slowly he learns to be a bit more open. It helps that Rossi is so encouraging.-Dinners at Rossi’s started approximately five months, two weeks, one day, five hours, twenty-seven minutes, and sixteen seconds ago. Nothing out of the ordinary happened those five months ago to prompt the beginning of these evening-long escapisms except for Rossi approaching Spencer at his desk and asking,You hungry?To which Spencer had reluctantly admitted that Yes, he was, actually, but do you mind if we don’t go out?
Relationships: Spencer Reid & David Rossi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 380





	Making Cocoa for Spencer Reid

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone! couple of notes: 
> 
> 1\. proof-reading? i dont know what that means!!!!! (i typed half of this up, abandoned it for a week, then typed the second half in a frenzy this evening and i have done NO reading through it for mistakes or britishisms so, like, idc)  
> 2\. title is a play on the title of a wendy cope poem ( _making cocoa for kingsley amis_ ) because i adore her to bits (UM super witty and sharp female poet? my heart just stopped)  
> 3a. uhhh..... am i projecting a lil bit on spencer again? sure thing. my anxiety is unbelievably crippling at the moment to the point that im wondering whether it wouldnt just be better for me to just come off my meds, since they dont seem to be doing anything. ive been nonverbal for two months, which is frustrating, and ive been meaning to write a fic about that too but this happened instead  
> 3b. on that note i have also been meaning to write a hotch and reid fic but damn writing hotch terrifies me because i have NO grasp on his character, so like. yeah.  
> 4\. oh yeah i think theres a statistic somewhere in there which is 100% made up because who the heck would be bothered to fact check - not me!!!
> 
> okay enough, time for me to shut up!! i hope this is enjoyable for everyone <3

Dinners at Rossi’s started approximately five months, two weeks, one day, five hours, twenty-seven minutes, and sixteen seconds ago. Nothing out of the ordinary happened those five months ago to prompt the beginning of these evening-long escapisms except for Rossi approaching Spencer at his desk and asking, _You hungry?_ To which Spencer had reluctantly admitted that Yes, he was, actually, but do you mind if we don’t go out? He’d meant to keep them in the office, order takeaway from the Chinese place close by that manages to deliver within twenty minutes no matter what the order, and possibly sit on Rossi’s couch in companionable silence, each with a casefile open on their knees. Rossi had murdered that plan with an easy going, _Sure, I wanted to cook anyway_. And just like that, the next thing Spencer knew, he was sat at Rossi’s breakfast counter watching the man make a Bolognese sauce, the sound of the boiling water that the spaghetti cooked in soothing against Spencer’s agitated brain.

Spencer had assumed it to be an isolated incident, born of concern on his behalf for how late he had stayed at the office that day. He had thus been surprised to find Rossi standing over him again, the next week, with the same offer. It was easy to accept. Soon, it became routine: every Wednesday, except for Wednesdays that they were away on cases, and then it was the very next evening after they got home. There’s something soothing about being at Rossi’s rather than at his own place, be it the quietly high-quality furniture that Spencer wouldn’t have thought he’d care for until he had existed for considerable amounts of time around it, or the presence of Rossi himself and Mudgie, his dog. He supposed that yes, actually, that’s got to be it, because as much as he adores his apartment (deep verdant greens that cradle him and his many, many, many books), it ultimately is lonely. 

Regardless, it was Wednesday, and the evening found Spencer once again at Rossi’s breakfast bar watching the man cook. It soothed something in him each time; every week, Rossi would tell him to relax in the living room with a book, or to watch a documentary, until the food was done – and every week, Spencer declined. He had _never _had this kind of stability.__

_Rossi_ , he’d said the last time that he’d been told to go and amuse himself while dinner was cooking, _I’d much rather be here._

_Why?_ Rossi had replied, as though he couldn’t fathom the idea that for Spencer, this was such a novelty in itself that it _was_ amusing. 

_Because_ , he’d set out to explain, _I’ve never really had anyone cook for me before._

Rossi had looked devastated at that, though he hid it well, and had offered to teach Spencer how to cook more than the meagre meals he had mastered in his teenage years. Spencer, however, was quite content to just sit back and watch Rossi cook; it wasn’t that he didn’t want to learn, just that he wanted these Wednesday evenings to be about relaxing and turning his brain off, and he could do that best by basking in the warm glow of someone cooking for him and having no expectations placed upon him. 

Here, he was just Spencer. He wasn’t Doctor, he wasn’t Reid. He wasn’t a co-worker or a student. He was just Spencer. He was just a friend. And he had had so few friends in his life that he grasped this with both hands like a falling man might clutch an offered rope – and he just hoped against hope that his hands wouldn’t get burnt if he held on. 

Rossi was the kind of friend that Spencer always imagined one day having as a boy, which was strange, because at first glance Rossi didn’t seem to be all that special at all. That’s what Spencer had first thought, when Rossi had appeared out of retirement and replaced Gideon like he was just coming back from an extended holiday: he’d been distantly polite and proper, but there had been something of a glass wall between himself and the rest of the team. Slowly, slowly, he had opened up; Spencer hadn’t noticed it happening, like one doesn’t notice a bud starting to bloom, or the stars shifting positions in the sky night after night. But one day, he’d woken up and found that Rossi had bought the whole team coffee from the (overpriced, in his opinion) coffeeshop near the office – and he’d remembered how each of them had taken it. Spencer had watched him integrate bit by bit into their family until he’d become so deeply entrenched that he could hardly believe that there had been a time when he’d not been there. The coffee had become a monthly treat – and he’d started to bring everyone their favourite pastry, too, though how he’d managed to find out what everyone liked, Spencer wasn’t sure. He certainly doesn’t remember ordering a pain au chocolat in front of Rossi ever before, and yet that is exactly what he finds waiting on his desk on Coffee Days (he suspects Garcia of cheating and telling him, though he isn’t too put out about it, because he does get a free pastry once a month). 

Regardless, it was at this snail’s pace that Rossi had managed to crawl up into Spencer’s heart and almost, if not entirely, overtake the position that he had once honoured Gideon with. He would never forget Gideon, but neither would he ever forgive him for leaving in the manner in which he had - and besides, with him gone, Spencer can recognise much of his ‘mentoring’ to have just been attempts to carve him into his own image. Rossi, however, gave the air of being simultaneously disinterested in all around him, and yet so attached that it would take death to separate him from the team. Spencer was hesitant, even now, after more years with Rossi at his side than he’d ever had with Gideon, to completely believe in Rossi’s loyalty for the team (and, though he would only admit this in a singular, quiet corner of his mind that was overwrought with cobwebs, him specifically) – but so far, Rossi had never acted in any way to disprove Spencer’s tentative assumption that he was here to stay. 

Spencer was under no illusion that he had what many would call _‘daddy issues’_ , though he didn’t like to think of it as such (frankly, he didn’t like to think of it _at all)._ When his father had left him, age ten and alone in a world that suddenly felt much, much bigger than his little corner of Las Vegas had previously made it seem to be, Spencer had wondered exactly where he had gone wrong. He had joined the T-ball team that his dad coached, playing along with the other children despite being so much smaller than them, and not ever having fun either – all because that’s what his father wanted of him, what his father _thought_ he needed. He’d stopped watching the twenty-four-hour news channel when he had been five so that he wouldn’t blurt out the ‘weird’ statistics that he learnt from those reports at the few rare dinnertimes they had as a family. William Reid hadn’t liked it when, after ranting about the bothersome client he’d been dealing with all week, Spencer had chimed in with a statistic that fifty-two percent of all marriages ended in divorce, and only a third of those people would go on to remarry. Neither did William Reid like the fact that Spencer could read so much faster than him, even as a child under ten; or that he was, by age eight, well on his way through a quarter of his father’s law books and could recite them back word for word. And, while he tolerated Diana’s spontaneous outbursts of Shakespeare, he did not appreciate Spencer chiming in and playing whichever character would appear next. _He is a boy, Diana,_ Spencer had heard his father tell his mother harshly, once: _He shouldn’t be reading Hamlet!_

(His mother, of course, had fervently disagreed.) 

Thus, while William Reid leaving had felt, just a tiny bit, like a weight being lifted from Spencer’s chest so that he may breathe untroubled for possibly the first time, it also felt like being run over by a car and then expected to continue through life without any medical help. Without his father around, Spencer would no longer have to keep up the pretence of enjoying sports or remind himself to keep his mouth shut when he thought of a particularly relevant fact or pretend that he was reading a lot slower than he, in fact, was. But, without his father around, caring for both himself and his mother was a lot more difficult than his ten-year-old brain had really anticipated, and _god,_ he _really_ could’ve done with the help, thanks a lot, _dad._ Slowly, feelings of bitterness stole the breath that he had once used to cry for his absent father. 

_No matter,_ he’d told himself, and it truly hadn’t mattered for a long while, because in college he had steadfastly _refused_ to let anyone close to him like that again. He had his mother, and he didn’t need anyone else. He came home some evenings, after classes, and at weekends, and more often than not she would greet him with a happiness that was so rare from her that for a moment or two he would be quite blinded by all but her joy, and they’d stand in the doorway, holding each other, and he would think, _This is all that I need._ She would read to him: what space was not filled by her chattering about the letters her old students would write to her or him going over what his classes were like, would be filled instead with the soft, breezy tones of her voice as she read her favourites. One night that he remembered with particular fondness, they had taken it in turns to read a book each of the _Iliad_ aloud, and had bet each other that the one to fall asleep first would have to teach the other a new skill. Diana Reid was a constant moving force, a stream that never slowed, even when confronted by the boulder of her illness: she learnt, and she learnt, and she learnt. She was all that William Reid had refused to be. 

It wasn’t until Jason Gideon gave a lecture on behavioural science that Spencer had attended half out of genuine interest and half out of a need to get out of a peer-reviewing session (since he’d had quite enough of the older students stealing his research in the chemistry labs and thinking that they could get away with it just because of how much smaller and younger he was than everyone, thank you very much) that Spencer lowered his walls ever-so-slightly. Gideon was strangely charming, in a way that’s difficult to describe but had everything to do with the fact that he seemed to give the impression that he knew the answers to every question and would answer honestly, if only he was asked. Here was the first person to ever indulge Spencer’s incessant question asking with patience and grace. No, not just indulge – _encourage._ Spencer’s entire life up until meeting Jason Gideon had been a litany of _Shut up, Spencer!_

It wasn’t much. But it certainly more than he had in years. 

Perhaps the familiarity that Spencer had slowly, cautiously built up with Rossi could have also been achieved with Gideon if he had stuck around for longer, and also if he had been a little more emotionally available. For all his merits (and Spencer truly did value them: he hadn’t learnt more from anyone than from Gideon, in profiling and beyond), Gideon was the most emotionally bottled up being that Spencer had ever met, though he gave the illusion that he was a lot more open than he really was. Rossi, on the other hand, proved quickly to be the opposite: seemingly closed off but, once poked and prodded a little, as open as a rose in full bloom. And though Spencer himself was well versed in keeping his feelings to himself (his father, brought up on typical masculine ideals, often rebuked him for crying, and once he had left, Spencer resolved himself to be strong to take care of his mother), he needed those around him to remind him that it is more than alright, and quite human, actually, to express his emotions. Despite all the good that Gideon had taught Spencer to do, he had also enabled Spencer’s unhealthy tendency to keep things inside when they would be better off out. 

So, when Spencer said, _I’ve never really had anyone cook for me before,_ he actually wanted to say, _Before my dad left, he’d make a week’s worth of food at the weekend and leave it for my mum and I to eat during the week, because he’d always stay too late at the office to cook for me when he got home, and mum believed that the government had planted bugs in every appliance we owned, so she wouldn’t even step foot in the kitchen. After he left, she declined so much that even on the few days she seemed more lucid and cooperative, I was hesitant to let her near the stove, just in case she hurt herself in some way. I had to learn how to make what I could by myself._

And he knew that Rossi would hear what he didn’t say, and he wouldn’t push, and it was exactly because he wouldn’t push that Spencer inevitably ended up spilling all his secrets across the dining room table like he was a saltshaker with its lid off, tipped. He could never clean up his mess of words back inside himself, but luckily Rossi never seemed to mind. Maybe that was what Spencer actually enjoyed about dinners at Rossi’s: the unburdening, the high of the relief after _talking_ to someone about the smallest things, the things that bother him, his favourite memories– the way he felt empty in the best of ways as though he had been an overflowing sink and _talking_ had been his plug being removed. 

Rossi, in turn, would talk about old BAU cases, and about the strange people he would meet at his book signings, and sometimes, if they were both feeling nostalgically melancholic, about Gideon. He never commented on the fact that some weeks, Spencer would scarf his plate of food down and scoop up seconds like he hadn’t eaten for days, nor that some weeks Spencer would barely take three mouthfuls before resigning to pushing the food around like a broody teenager. Spencer wondered whether Rossi thought that his appetite, or lack thereof, had something to do with that evening’s conversation topic. He never said, _Sometimes I can’t stand the taste of anything and all the textures are disgusting,_ though maybe Rossi knew, anyway, since those would be the evenings that they ate blancmange for dessert (which was much less of an assault on his senses). 

‘Kid, what’s got you so distracted tonight?’ Rossi asked, and here they were: Wednesday night, halos of candlelight dimly illuminating the dining room, table set up with hallmarked silver knives and forks, prettily painted porcelain plates awaiting their servings of tomato and beef tortellini. 

‘Just thinking about how our weekly dinners started,’ Spencer replied. 

He was graced with a grin. ‘Well, someone had to take care of you, since you do such a poor job of it yourself!’ 

_Yes,_ Spencer thought: _that’s essentially it, isn’t it?_ And where he might have been bitter about this revelation even just a year ago, he was now warmed by it, and he said, perhaps more sincerely than Rossi had expected, ‘I’m glad it’s you.’ 

And Rossi replied, just as sincerely but with a smile as soft as the candlelight, ‘So am I, kid. So am I.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you very much for reading! as always, please let me know what you thought if you liked it, and tell me why if you didn't (but pls remember i am super sensitive)!!!!! hope everyone's staying sane during quarantine, remember to drink water as summer bares down on us!!


End file.
